Online Safety Act enforces stricter age verification for pornographic content
Internet platforms and social media sites are now required to introduce robust safety measures including rigorous age checks to protect children from harmful content.
The UK’s national communications regulator, Ofcom, is expected to enforce the Online Safety Act, particularly the Children’s Codes that require platforms to prevent minors from accessing harmful content such as self-harm and pornography.
The regulator said that tougher age checks will make it more difficult for children to stumble across harmful material online.
Social media platforms and search engines should also ensure that harmful content is kept off of children’s feeds entirely.
Websites that ignore the new laws could be fined up to £18m or 10% of their global turnover. While sites or apps could also receive formal warnings. In extreme scenarios, Ofcom could ask a court to prevent a site from being available in the UK.
In terms of implementing age verification checks, Ofcom will use resources such as facial age estimation which assesses a person’s age through a live photo or video, credit card checks and photo ID matching.
Whatever method a platform uses for its age checks must be “technically accurate, robust and fair,” according to Ofcom.
All sites and apps allowing pornography in the UK will be required to have “highly effective” methods to check the age of their users by 25 July.
Pornhub and numerous other adult websites have confirmed that they will introduce enhanced age checks.
While Ofcom has said that X and Grindr have also committed to age checks with X planning a facial age estimation system using AI.